Alveda statement on voting rights act

Priests for Life

7/27/2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The right to vote has always been fundamental in America, yet it took years of struggle and sacrifice before that right was extended to everyone in this country. I am intimately familiar with that struggle and sacrifice.

While I am thrilled that the right to vote will continue to be guaranteed by the Voting Rights Act, I am grieved that another fundamental right has not yet been extended to everyone in this country – the right to life. As a post-abortive mother and Pastoral Associate at Priests for Life, I am intimately familiar with the struggle and sacrifice to extend this right, as well.

African Americans comprise 12 percent of this nation’s population, yet 32 percent of the babies aborted in the United States are black. To put it bluntly, abortion is doing what those who lynched and bombed and burned could not – it is taking away the God given rights of African Americans and everyone else who society today doesn’t wish to recognize as equals.

Discrimination and violence against the weak and voiceless of all colors and ethnicities continue in the form of abortion, but they must and will end.

I sincerely thank President Bush for his support of the Voting Rights Act. And I bless him for supporting the right to life of all of God’s children.